The "50 or so votes" referenced in all articles on this ballot can only mean that there were either 32 or 64 votes given the percentages above (i.e. 3% of the vote is either 1 vote or 2 votes). Human estimation tendencies would lean towards the real answer being 64 votes.

A straw poll was held at the September 12 Republican debate, to find out who the debate audience thought were the front runners, both before and after the debate. Before the debate, Ron Paul came first, Rick Perry came second, and Michele Bachmann came third. After the debate, Ron Paul was still first, Michele Bachmann came second, and Herman Cain came third.[28] CNN have not released the full results of this poll, instead holding an online poll which omitted Ron Paul from the choices. The winner of the online poll was Mitt Romney.

The Florida Republican Party held a straw poll at the end of September 2011,[31] which was won by Herman Cain. Political analysts attributed Cain's win to Perry's poor debate performances, but others pointed to the fact that Cain won the Florida straw poll after campaigning in-person throughout the state more than Perry.[32]

Note: This was an unusual straw poll in which voter's preferences were matched against each other for five rounds, with the less popular candidate being removed at each stage. There were initially 6 available choices, which were whittled down to two, with the final result being as shown above.